Physicians Have Abortions Too: Maintaining Access to Abortion Supports Women's Careers
(a very important read)
Physicians Have Abortions Too: Maintaining Access to Abortion Supports Women’s Careers
4/18/2022 by Arghavan Salles, Morgan S. Levy and Vineet Arora
Abortion is personal for physicians and healthcare workers, not just professional. We must help protect abortion access.
Protesters gather in front of the U.S. Supreme Court as the justices hear arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, a case about a Mississippi law that bans most abortions after 15 weeks, on Dec. 1, 2021 in Washington, D.C. (Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)
Being alive in 2022 means facing never-ending attacks on human rights. With the most conservative Supreme Court since the 1930s, there now seems to be little standing between those of us with a cervix and the autonomy over our own bodies. When Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed to the Supreme Court in 2020, many believed it would only be a matter of time before the precedent set by Roe v. Wade, securing the right to abortion, would be overturned. According to the Guttmacher Institute, in 2021, 19 states enacted 108 abortion restrictions, more than in any year since 1973. Prior to the end of 2021, the Supreme Court heard arguments related to two such bills: Senate Bill 8 (S.B. 8) in Texas and Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health in Mississippi. The verdict on Dobbs is expected to be delivered this summer.
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Abortion Is Common Among Physicians and Medical Students
As two physicians and a medical student, we find this all incredibly disturbing. None of us performs abortion, but all three of us understand how critical abortion is, not just for the population at large, but for our physician colleagues. In a study published this month in Obstetrics & Gynecology, we shared data we collected in the spring of 2021 on the ways physicians and physicians-in-training build their families. We had a self-selected sample of over 1,700 people who want to have biological children. But even in this group over 11 percent of participants had abortions. Among the small subset of participants who were in medical school, nearly one in six had had an abortion. Given the selection bias in the sample, these are likely underestimates of the true rate of abortion in the physician workforce.
Abortion Is an Intrinsic Risk of Fertility Treatments
People may pursue abortions for any number of reasons, including simply not being ready or not having the appropriate resources to bring a child into this world. In addition, abortion is a part of building their family for many, sometimes due to the use of assisted reproductive technology (ART). Judge Barrett has in the past supported a group, St. Joseph County Right to Life, which favors the criminalization of doctors who support the discarding of embryos created in the in vitro fertilization process. Since women physicians have approximately twice the rate of infertility as non-physician women, our chances of needing an abortion related to fertility treatments are considerable.If this group has their way and physicians are criminalized for discarding embryos or being involved in the care of someone who has a miscarriage, fertility doctors will no longer be able to support people building their families using ART. That means the over 81,000 babies born in 2018 in the United States as a result of ART would never have been born. These babies aren’t just statistics. You either know or know of some of them. Celebrities such as Chrissy Tiegen, Brooke Shields and Emma Thompson have all used IVF. Would you wish to erase their families?
Abortion Access Is Critical for Women’s Careers
Importantly, abortion preserves the ability of women to build their careers and remain active members of the workforce. In our study, several participants commented on why they had abortions. One person said:
“I had an abortion at 19 that absolutely made my future life, career and family possible. My family planning included [the abortion], a diaphragm, Plan B, natural family planning and a fundamentally flexible approach to managing my fertility throughout.”
It’s important to recognize most people are less fortunate than the physicians and trainees in our study, with fewer resources and less social support. It should be the choice of any person with a cervix, not the choice of any legislative body, whether or not to have an abortion. It is critical for all doctors and healthcare workers, not just those who perform abortions, to clearly state that ************ABORTION IS HEALTHCARE************(emphasis mine). Abortion is not a niche procedure that is rarely performed. It should not be relegated to closets and alleyways, as it was in the pre-Roe era. If the current attacks on abortion rights are successful, the number of abortions performed will not decrease—the number of safe abortions will. If we, as physicians, want to support our patients’ and colleagues’ health, we must support abortion.
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https://msmagazine.com/2022/04/18/abortion-doctors-physicians-career-roe-v-wade/